The exciting extended contest where the Dodgers overcome the Blue Jays by one run drew a total 51M viewers in the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets. Major League Baseball stated this marks the highest-rated Fall Classic Game 7 after the 1991 contest featuring the Minnesota Twins and Braves.
Television Viewership Breakdown
Last Saturday’s epic contest averaged 27.33 million viewers on Fox Sports channels, Fox Deportes and their streaming platforms. According to ratings data, it was the second most-watched broadcast of the week.
It also stands as the most-watched World Series game after the 2017 final game involving the Los Angeles Dodgers and Astros, which drew 29.07 million. This represents a sixteen percent improvement compared to the previous finale between the Nationals and Astros, which drew 23.19M.
In the Nielsen ratings, the sixth game placed fourth, Game 4 was seventh, Game 5 was eighth, and the third game landed in 13th position.
Global Viewership Numbers
In the Canadian market, the game drew over 11 million watchers on Sportsnet and the French TVA Sports channel. This made it the most-watched English-language broadcast in the country since the 2010 edition Winter Olympics.
In the Japanese market, where the final contest began at 9 p.m. local time, it averaged 12M. This came after the previous Friday’s sixth game – in which Fall Classic Most Valuable Player Yamamoto gave up one run in six frames – recorded 13.1 million viewers, making it the highest-rated World Series game on a single network in Japan.
Overall Averages and Patterns
The entire seven-match World Series recorded 15.71 million viewers on Fox, a 2% increase from the previous year’s Dodgers-Yankees series. This marks the initial instance since 2015 and 2016 that the World Series has recorded audience growth for two consecutive years.
Including the Game 1 broadcast on the Univision network, the complete US average was 16.1 million. The total Fall Classic viewership in Japan was 9.7 million and 8.1 million in the Canadian market.
The complete MLB Postseason on Fox and its sister channels averaged 8.09M watchers, an eight percent increase compared to last year and Fox’s best playoff ratings since 2017.
MLB stated that the Fall Classic was broadcast in 203 countries and territories by 44 broadcasting partners in sixteen various tongues.
